Guest Post, Review and Giveaway: Betrayed by Shadows

Betrayed by Shadows 

by Nancy Gideon

Genre: Paranormal Romance.

Blurb: 

Balancing a criminal empire and a preternatural clan war, reluctant front man Giles St. Clair doesn’t need a problem like Brigit MacCreedy . . . How much trouble can the head-strong and manipulative Shifter beauty get into in two weeks? Plenty when her schemes range from kidnapping to fleeing the retribution of her dead lover’s clan. 

With her family’s lives on the line, Brigit is willing to do whatever it takes to save them. The only thing standing in her way is an immovable stone wall of a man she can’t bully or beguile . . . a human, no less, who has promised to protect her from the secrets and dangers she conceals. 

Risking her own safety gets complicated when an honorable and annoyingly desirable man puts himself between her and her powerful enemies in a battle he can’t win in this Taming of the Shrew meets Shifter Goodfellas on the Bayou tale of consequences, redemption and finding love in all the wrong places.

Guest Post:

Stuff Just Got Real by Nancy Gideon

One of the most fun and challenging things for a paranormal author is to bring a fictitious world and all its characters from imagination to reality in the mind of the reader. You’re asking that reader to suspend belief, to take a leap of faith into your creative realm with the promise that you’ll catch them, that from page one to page end they’ll be in New Orleans surrounded by dangerous Shape-shifters, that unless they go to Snopes to fact check, that those shadowy beings could . . . and do exist.

One of the things I learned from my favorite authors Dean Koontz and Stephen King is to first ground the fantastical in everyday reality. By giving the readers something to relate to - a seemingly normal setting where they feel comfortable, basic human emotions such as vulnerability, love, the struggle for survival, flawed and sympathetic characters they can identify with . . . then you can screw with that reality without losing them! If you can make a reader believe that French Quarter alley exists, that your heroine is in peril and afraid for her life, that reader is invested, is put right in the center of the action, and they will accept the fact that those in pursuit are preternatural creatures. The things that are real tether the reader to those things that are pure imagination.

To make it real, words need to transform from flat text on a page to become sensual and textured. They need to provoke a reader’s response, to make them experience the scene you create. When I bring my readers to a backwater bayou, I want them to feel the wet heat on their skin, to hear the drone of insects, to smell the heaviness of decay, to taste the salty air, so when I ask them to see lupine shapes moving through the tangled brush on the shore, I’ve got them so deeply embedded in the moment, they’re onboard.  When my heroine gets separated from her protector in the Quarter and is taking a shortcut through an alley, the reader can hear the noise and music from just around the corner, can envision the cobbled street, the shadowed walls, can feel her panic when she realizes she’s not alone. And because she’s a Shifter with heightened senses, the reader experiences her intuitive warning of danger to come with a prickle of anticipation. The real blending with the surreal.

Let me take you on that journey into my secretive and suspenseful “By Moonlight” world with BETRAYED BY SHADOWS, the 7th book in my dark paranormal series, where shape-shifters walk among humans and danger is just a heartbeat away. You will believe . . .

  About the author:

An author of over fifty novels since 1987, Nancy Gideon thrives on variety. Under her own name and several pseudonyms, she’s written award-winning series suspense, historical and paranormal bestsellers, earned a “Career Achievement for Historical Adventure”, and has had two original horror screenplays optioned for film. A Michigan native, she works full time as a legal administrative assistant and feeds a NetFlix addiction.

Author Links: 

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Buy Links: 

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